Browsing by study line "Yleinen ja aikuiskasvatustiede"

The aim of my Master’s Thesis was to find out what kind of tasks were set for education in the 2019 parliamentary election programs. For years, researchers in the United States and Europe have studied the educationalization of social problems, which refers to the tendency to look to educational institutions in resolving the pressing social problems. In Finland, this phenomenon has rarely been studied under its own concept. Previous studies on the change in educational policy towards more individual-centered and market-oriented thinking suggested that educationalization also takes place in the Finnish context as well. In my research, I try to find out the kind of tasks political parties assign to education in their election programs and how they present the educationalization of social problems. The aim of my research is to create a picture of the most common tasks to be set for the education in the spring 2019 parliamentary election programs and to analyze the educationalization associated with the programs. The material of my research is the election programs of the parties elected to Parliament in the 2019 parliamentary elections. In my study, I relied on a frame analysis, which I use to structure the most common tasks and ideals set for education. After compiling the frames, I analyze each frame based on previous research. In my analysis, I seek to highlight the educationalization that appears in the election programs. The tasks given by the parties were very much in line with each other. The results showed a clear educationalization, which identified various complex societal problems as the responsibility for education, without specifying in more detail how education could actually solve the problem. More extensive research on educationalization is needed in the Finnish context, for example, to find out whether the resources given to education are in line with the increased number of tasks.

Objectives. The aim of this research was to address the possible connections between school choice and school segregation. The study covered three countries that were Finland, Sweden and England. The theoretical background of this research was based on the most relevant concepts for this research. These concepts were neoliberalism, New Public Management, school choice, educational markets and segregation. Method. I conducted this research as a systematic literature review which means that the data consisted of other researches. The collection of the material was conducted systematically from three different databases. The final material consists of 17 articles, 7 of them from Sweden and 5 from Finland and 5 from England. After the search I analysed all the articles from the point of my research question. From those results I formed a synthesis about each country. Results and conclusion. According to the results there were segregation between schools and in many cases, it was the result of school choice. In some cases, school segregation was explained to be the cause of residential segregation and the cause of residential segregation and school choice combined. In Finland and Sweden school choice explained school segregation more often than it did in England.

Finnish grammar schools were partly gender-segregated during the independence time, because 35 finnish-language girls’ schools operated in Finland and at the most approximately 40% of all pupils studied in these girls’ schools. The task of this thesis is to find out, using the methodology of oral history, the significance of the girls’s schools as an educator in the memories of pupils from 1930s to 1970s. My thesis is based on qualitative research, where I describe and analyze school memories with a phenomenon- and event-focused research method and I use oral history to interpret broad cultural and social phenomena and events. The focus of my thesis is school history and social development viewed from a microhistorical perspective. With the oral history data I form a longitudinal picture of the individual as part of the girls’ school culture and I examine the transitions of the education culture across generations and find out what the girls’ school’s education has meant to different generations of women in the past. The source of my thesis is the survey material on girls’ and boys’ schools experiences collected in the Finnish Literature Society’s folk poetry archive’s tradition and contemporary culture collections in 2005-2006, which consists of girls’ school memories written by 26 women. The research material includes seventeen different girls’ schools located in ten different cities. The school memories I studied represented a strong narrative of experiences of teachers’ educational practices towards their pupils. The girls’ school pupils of 1930s and 1940s took the educational ideas of the school to be humility, necessary submission and the interest of the homeland as a matter of course. The teachers in the school memories were harsh and demanding, the punishments were based on blaming and creating shame. In 1950s the school’s educational culture sought uniformity and unity, and the teachers’ educational task emphasized the maintenance of the school’s operating culture with strict discipline and control of order. Restrained behavior was a demand internalized by the pupils from the school of the time. In 1960s the educational culture of the school began to change, although the teachers’ actions were still based on restrictive pedagogy and eradicating arrogance from the pupils. It was only at 1970s that the democratization of the school changed the teachers’ attitude towards their pupils and they were met as individuals. Throughout the decades, special sexual morality education was emphasized in the educational mission of the girls’ school. The pupils saw the schoool’s mission to raise kind, obedient, innocent and well-mannered girls.

Aims. The aim of this thesis was to examine and describe from the perspective of the lifespan model of motivation how Finnish late adolescents navigate the post-high school transition, that is, how they channel, choose, and compensate career goals. The theorydriven, exploratory hypotheses assumed that the current situation in education or employment is associated with the career goal content (H1); the underlying meaning behind the career goal is associated with the career goals young people prioritise (H2); current situation in education or employment is associated with the change in career goals (H3); changes in career goals are associated with the importance of the career goal (H4). The results confirmed hypotheses H1, H2, and H3. Methods. The data were collected in 2019 using an intensive longitudinal setting. The weekly questionnaire was sent to sixty young Finns for thirty-nine consecutive weeks. At the start of the study, participants were 18 or 19 years of age. The qualitative data were analysed by means of content analysis and aggregated into key domains and core themes. The associations between categorical variables were examined using crosstabulation and χ2 test of independence. The associations between variables were also displayed graphically. Results and conclusions. Our findings were in line with previous literature revealing that the participants’ situation in education or employment was associated with the career goals they engage with. Studying was associated with prioritising goals concerning education, for example, high school graduation or university admission. In turn, working predicted goals concerning work or finances. Finnish late adolescents value higher education, and that was reflected in the results, as the career goals concerning university admission were prioritised among participants in almost every group. In general, our results reflected what are the expectations of the Finnish young people, but also what they expect of themselves. Based on the results, it seems that students state different reasons for career goal change than those who were working or neither working nor studying.

Constantly changing work life has placed new demands and challenges on the Finnish education system. The respond to these demands and challenges is a General Upper Secondary reform, which was launched in 2017. The General Upper Secondary reform includes renewal of curriculum, a new Act on General Upper Secondary Education and amending the regulations for the matriculation examination. The reform challenges the traditionally strong autonomous position of teachers as teachers are expected to adopt new ways of working. According to previous studies, the change in teacher work towards a team work culture requires new professional skills from teachers. The purpose of my study was to find out what possible changes and challenges the renewal of curriculum (LOPS) might have on the LOPS-tutors work. Furthermore, I wanted to map out whether the competencies of teachers need to be updated after possible changes in competency requirements. I studied the phenomenon qualitatively by interviewing six LOPS- tutors who, in addition to their teacher work, are working closely on reform of General Upper Secondary Education. The material of this study was collected by semi-structured theme interviews. As a theoretical part, I defined the General Upper Secondary Education in the Finnish context, the history of school development, teachership and teachers work. In addition, I presented the key themes of the reform, the new Act on General Upper Secondary Education and renewal of curriculum. The method of analysis in this study was theory-guided content analysis. According to the results of my study, the teacher work life will change due to the new curriculum (2019). The most essential changes affecting to teachers’ work were increasing amount of team work and interaction, multidisciplinary study modules and the expansion of supervision. Lack of time, concern for well-being of teachers, as well as the structural challenges and bureaucracy emerged as key challenges in the implementation of the reform. Interviewees did not agree on whether teachers would need in-service training. My study supports the view that teachers have a contradictory attitude towards school changes. Although school development was seen as an important and necessary factor, the changes did not appear to be realistic taking into account the everyday reality of the school.

According to the self-determination theory, motivation consists of top of three innate psychological needs; need of autonomy, competence and relatedness. If these needs are fully satisfied we experience intrinsic motivation. If not, motivation is extrinsic and externally regulated. Intrinsic motivation should be strived for because it leads to a better performance, learning and well-being. This study compares the motivation of high school students between their study situations and free time situations in the context of self-determination theory. The participants were Finnish second year high-school students from the Helsinki metropolitan area. Within the context of self-determination theory, this study explored external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation and intrinsic regulation. The research data consisted of the answers from 150 students and 3431 completed questionnaires. The data was collected using an experience sampling method by the Bridging the Gaps study. The data survey lasted from 11 to 12 days and it was collected in different schools in sequential order. The data was collected from March till May in 2018. The first point of this research was to examine if there is difference in the motivation between studying and free-time and how much variation there is in the motivation. The method used for this was a linear regression. The study found that the smallest coefficient of determination was within the identified regulation. Studying and free time managed to explain 8.6% of the variation in the motivation when it comes to the identified regulation. The largest coefficient of determination was with the introjected regulation. Studying and free time explained 42.5% of the variation in the motivation when it comes to the extrinsic regulation. The second goal of this research was to examine if there is variation in the motivation between students when study time and free time are not taken into consideration. The method used for this was a multilevel modeling approach on level zero. The smallest variation between the students was within the intrinsic motivation. The variation in motivation was then 6.79% between the students. The largest variation in motivation was within the introjected regulation. The variation in motivation was 23.01%. The third focal point of the research was to examine how the motivation is correlated with study situations and free time situations with a multilevel modeling approach (mixed linear model). The study found that the studying situations were positively correlated with the extrinsic regulation and the introjected regulation. The study situations were negatively correlated with the intrinsic regulation. The free time situations were positively correlated with the intrinsic regulation and negatively correlated with the extrinsic regulation and the introjected regulation. The results indicated that the participants experienced more intrinsic motivation during their free time than during their studies. The benefits of the intrinsic motivation are evident when it comes to the school performance and well-being of the students. For this reason, it would be beneficial to see if the intrinsic motivation experienced at free time could be transferred and explored also in the studying situations.

Goals. The purpose of this study was to find out what kind of social media groups can be identified among high school students and what kind of gender differences exist in the use of social media. This study also examined whether the social media user groups differ in self-esteem and how gender and socioeconomic background are related to the relationship between social media use and self-esteem. It is important to examine adolescents’ social media user habits in order to gain more detailed information about the association between adolescents’ social media use and self-esteem. Methods. The data (N = 1203) was collected from high school students in 34 Helsinki schools in spring 2018. Participants filled in questionnaires that measured social media use, self-esteem and questions regarding family background. Gender differences in social media usage were evaluated with Independent Samples t-Test and the relationship between with the preliminary variables were analyzed using Pearsons’ correlation factors. Respondents were divided into groups based on participation in social media by using the Two Step Cluster analysis. One-way analysis of variance examined whether groups differed in self-esteem. The one-way analysis of variance also examined whether socioeconomic background and gender influence how user groups differ in self-esteem. Results and conclusions. Four distinct groups were identified from the data: socially networked, knowledge-oriented, academically oriented, and active users. Differences in the use of social media by girls and boys were observed. Girls were found to use more social media for social networking compared to boys. Boys, in turn, were found to use more social media for knowledge-oriented and academically oriented purposes than girls. In addition, gender differences in the distribution of social media user groups were examined. The group of active users and socially networked were more popular among girls, while the knowledge-oriented and academically oriented groups were more popular among boys than girls. The group of active users was the largest group in the material and the most popular user group among girls and boys. Based on this, it can be stated that most girls and boys use digital media in a very diverse way. Social media user groups were not found to differ significantly in self-esteem, and gender or socioeconomic background did not explain the differences in user groups in self-esteem.

The transition from teacher education to working life can be a very demanding time. Early career teachers often experience uncertainty about their own skills and an inability to carry out teaching in accordance with their goals. Previous research has shown that teachers’ perceptions of their own ability to deliver teaching affects, among other things, the quality of teaching and student learning. The aim of this master's thesis is to increase the understanding of the practices of the induction in the school community that support the building of the professional self-efficacy of early career teachers. The research questions were: What kind of key experiences of the construction of the concept of self-efficacy are described by class teachers in the induction phase? What factors in everyday school life have strengthened the self-efficacy? What factors in everyday school life have impaired the self-efficacy? The data consisted of interviews with 9 class teachers at the beginning of their careers. The Journey Plot interview method was used to collect the interview data. The data for my study were collected as part of a larger joint research project of the Universities of Helsinki, Tampere and Eastern Finland entitled “Early career Teachers’ Professional Agency across four European countries -Key for Sustainable Educational Change?” funded by the Academy of Finland. The interview data were qualitatively content analyzed by applying an abductive strategy. The key experiences of professional self-efficacy were both positive and negative. The key experiences were especially related to the teaching and the challenges and changes in work. According to the results, the support of colleagues and the principal strengthened the professional self-efficacy of classroom teachers. Correspondingly, the lack of support and guidance in the induction phase weakened the professional self-efficacy experienced by class teachers. The lack of support especially in challenging situations and changes in work had a detrimental effect on teachers' professional self-efficacy. The results reinforce the notion that the professional self-efficacy of class teachers can be strengthened in everyday school life through diverse support and guidance.

In this thesis I inquire into young people’s stories about disability activism. This thesis aims to contribute to current discussions in the field of disability studies and youth studies concerning young disabled people’s societal influencing and participation. As it has been acknowledged in youth studies, young peoples’ political agency shouldn’t be seen only as an involvement in official politics, but more diversified and concerning also the different aspects of everyday life. In this thesis I ask how and in which ways young disability activists aim to influence societal practices and what opportunities for agency are available in these processes. I draw my analysis from five semi-structured interviews which I conducted with young disability activists aged between 22–26. The purpose of the interview was to produce accounts and descriptions about the research topic. I analysed the data using qualitative narrative method. Different disability and human rights organisations had an important role in enabling interviewees’ political agency. The organisations had opened a way to influence for many young people, nevertheless there were different contradictions attached to their narration. These contradictions were connected to the organisational practices effecting the limits and possibilities to be heard. Also the themes and topics young people consider important can be interpreted as apolitical from the organisational perspective. Some interviewees stated that for example sexual diversity was often bypassed. For some young people the political agency took the form of more mundane practices. These involved blogging and different social media activities, doing music with a disability politics twist and taking part in different demonstrations and marches. I interpreted these practices to be more spontaneous and not limited by organisational practices and thus they have the possibility to bring new topics and themes to the sphere of political. This thesis suggests that instead of seeing young people as politically passive, we should pay attention to their political agency and the different forms it might take.

In a varied working environment, individuals are expected to have an increasingly strong ability to tolerate change and adversity. Several research findings point out that a motivated person performs better in challenges, which enables them to succeed in their changing tasks. Therefore, it is important to understand how the factors that influence motivation are un-derstood on the individual level. Quantitative research has widely studied areas of work moti-vation, often using self-determination theory. In this research the theory of self-determination was used to pursue to give structure to the individual’s perception of factors influencing work motivation, and individual’s perceptions and experiences were emphasized rather than their generalizations and connections. The purpose of this qualitative research was to describe and understand media workers` per-ceptions of their motivation and how environment appears as part of perceptions. This research was carried out in collaboration with one media company. The data was collected with semi-structured interviews, where ten employees of the media company were interviewed. Educa-tional background of the interviewees was at least a bachelor’s degree, and all of them were currently working in various media positions. Among the interviewees were digital salespeople, product developers and a journalist manager. The data was analyzed with thematic analysis. As motivating factors media workers emphasized the possibility of influencing their own work, freedom, and responsibility, as well as internal rewards from work. Interviewees perceived as internal rewards the meaning of the work, self-development, and social support, and these were perceived as more significant than the value of the external rewards. The expectations to the organization were centered around development-friendly and equality-oriented work com-munity, where people work together but individual operating models are allowed. Based on this research, organizations would benefit from focusing on designing operating models and prac-tices which would allow for more flexible opportunities in considering individual wishes and goals in future decision making.